Boston Book Festival celebrates its ninth year on Oct. 28

Deborah Porter was writing book reviews for various publications about 10 years ago, when someone said to her, “You know, Boston is the only major city in the world that doesn’t have a book festival.”

That didn’t sound right. Not for a city that considers itself a center of culture and education. Not for the Athens of America. Not for the Hub of the Universe.

Porter decided to do something about it.

“Many things get accomplished as a result of naiveté,” says Porter, only half-jokingly. “That first year, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no idea how much money it would require and how many venues would be needed.”

And then, more bad news: The festival was a hit. OK, yes, that’s good news, but it also caused problems. When attendance doubled the second year – jumping from 6,000 to 12,000 – so did the headaches.

“After the first two years, I thought, why am I doing this?” Porter remembers. “There are so many moving parts, so much potential for things to go wrong. It was terrifying.”

But she persevered, and now the Boston Book Festival celebrates its ninth year on Oct. 28, with a packed schedule of free events, primarily around Copley Square in Boston. About 200 authors will descend upon the city, and 18,000 seats will be filled during the Festival.

So when you ask Porter if she’s read any good books lately, it’s no wonder that she responds, “I don’t have as much time to read.”

Porter, a Cambridge resident, admits that the recent presidential election hovers over this year’s Festival, which she dubbed “Where We Find Ourselves.”

Patrons who are interested in trying to make sense of our current political climate may find insights at “Politics: Where We Find Ourselves,” a discussion featuring New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and journalist Jared Yates Sexton. The panel will examine the dangers posed by our current disintegrating political dialog.

In the “Fiction: Strangers in a Strange Land” session, fiction writers Jonny Sun, Hala Alyan and Lisa Ko talk about the unifying themes of their work, including the difficulty of being displaced and the universal desire for home.

Race continues to be one of the country’s defining issues, and the Festival offers a session called “Racism in America: It’s a Crime.” In his book, “A Colony in a Nation,” MSNBC host Chris Hayes digs deeper into the inequality of the American criminal justice system. He’s joined by James Forman, Jr., author of “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” and Carol Anderson, author of the timely “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.”

If you think these events may be so popular that you won’t be able to find a seat, Porter says that’s really a misconception about the Festival.

“During the first couple of years, there were some events that people couldn’t get into,” she says. “But now we have more sessions and, when necessary, bigger venues. For example, ‘Racism in America’ is at a 1,000-seat venue.”

At book festivals, celebrity authors often steal the spotlight from lesser-known, but equally worthy, writers. Porter says it goes with the territory.

“That’s kind of the way it is,” she says. “People love celebrities. I’m not going to change that. But usually all our events are well-attended. There’s an audience for all authors. I find that encouraging.”

With the massive event just days away, Porter’s schedule is packed, but she still leaves herself some time to worry about the weather.

She admits she’ll start checking her smartphone to see if there’s a sun symbol for Saturday, Oct. 28. But she’s not too worried. Over these past nine years, she’s discovered that book fans are hardy souls.

“That first year, it was rainy and windy,” she says, “but people still came, so that was encouraging.”

Porter is a hardy soul, as well. How else could she piece together this logistical jigsaw puzzle with her staff of three?

And luckily for Boston book enthusiasts, she didn’t heed her husband’s dire prediction 10 years ago when she told him about her idea for a book festival.

“Well, you know,” he said, “in 10 years, there won’t be any more books on paper.”

“Fortunately,” says Porter, “that didn’t turn out to be true.”

Some other highlights of the 2017 Boston Book Festival

In a session entitled “Memoir: Arrivals and Departures,” Adam Gopnik (writer for The New Yorker) will discuss his new book, “At the Strangers’ Gate,” which chronicles his early days in 1980s New York City. He’ll be joined by Kristen Radtke (managing editor of Sarabande Books), who will present her inventive visual memoir, “Imagine Wanting Only This.”

In his new book, Harvard professor and Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt turned his attention to one of the foundational myths of Western civilization. In “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve,” he traces the history of the story and describes the way various historical figures grappled with its meaning.

What qualities make a good leader? Nancy Koehn tackled that subject in her book “Forged in Crisis,” in which she looked at the defining characteristics of great leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Shackleton and Frederick Douglass. In a session called “Good Leaders,” she’ll be joined by Tony Tjan, whose book about leadership, “Good People,” is the result of almost 100 interviews with executives, innovators and artists.

The Boston Book Festival is on Saturday, Oct. 28, with a kickoff event on Oct. 27. For a complete list of the Festival’s times and events, visit bostonbookfest.org.